MARIA DUARTE is swept along by the cocky self-belief of a ping-pong hustler in a surprisingly violent drama
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Greater focus on the collateral damage connected to Salazar’s rule would have provided better context and more balance to his portrayal
STEVE ANDREW recommends a lively and often moving guide to once vibrant spaces that have been abandoned or swept away
GEOFF BOTTOMS appreciates the local touch brought to a production of Dickens’s perennial classic
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a production whose design and cartoonish acting overwhelms the close scrutiny of characters
SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys the raucous familiarity of a traditional topsy-turvy pantomime
RON JACOBS introduces the latest novel by the best writer of US working-class fiction writing today
Salazar: The Dictator Who Refused to Die
by Tom Gallagher I Hurst Publishers £25
AS leader of Portugal from 1932 to 1968, Antonio de Oliveira Salazar was one of the most enduring dictators of the 20th century, wielding power through what his latest biographer, Tom Gallagher, identifies as a combination of “technical skills and acute political intuition.”
He came to his exalted position largely as a result of the terrible period that followed the 1910 revolution in Portugal, which ushered in a democratic republic but led to more than 15 years of political and economic chaos.
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